


Mánagarmr Ísabrot

by Rigil_Kentauris



Category: Fire Emblem Heroes
Genre: M/M, POV Third Person, Self-Doubt, copious worldbuilding, dark curse issues, hrid thinks its one sided attraction, other tags as soon as i figure out what this is about, want to guess if hes right?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 15:38:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15585120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rigil_Kentauris/pseuds/Rigil_Kentauris
Summary: Deep in the snowfield of Nifl every year is celebrated the bond between those who are lost, and those who save them. In this kingdom, there exists a custom. If you're rescued from the snow, you owe your rescuer a debt...and where we come from, this is important.





	Mánagarmr Ísabrot

**Author's Note:**

> is messy but i dont feel like editing anymore rn im so sleepy  
> anyway i originally started this for ferarepairweek and then i never got done in time but anyawy so thats how this happened  
> im calling them chrídence until someone makes me stop im reserving judgment on zacharíd until i know what sound the í makes but that would be my second thought
> 
> old norse note:  
> Mánagarmr is the wolf thats supposed to eat the moon at ragnarök and ísabrot is 'ice breaking' related, apparently, to við ísa-brot 'when the ice broke up (in the spring)' so. ill explain all that later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if there arent any typos in this im gonna be flat out shocked

Nifl is colder than Embla. _Far_ colder than Askr. Kiran is used to it by now, but Hríd is worried about Prince Bruno. He’d attempted to give him his cloak, but Prince Bruno had carefully shrugged it aside much in the same frustrating way he sidestepped any other attempts to lend him aid.

Though he couldn’t prove it, Hríd suspected this was less an attitude of _I don’t need it_ and more one of _I don’t deserve it._

“You’re Askran. It will get colder.”

Prince Bruno had only looked at him askance, with the beginnings of a jaded smile.

“Dude,” Kiran calls out, in the middle of accepting a scarf from Fjorm despite their professed tolerance to the weather, “take the stupid fish.”

Yes, Kiran. The great uniter. Everyone stops to look over at them, with varying degrees of confusion.

“Never mind,” they mumble, burying their face in their scarf and tugging their hood down a little farther.

Still, despite Kiran’s confusing entreaties, Prince Bruno recalcitrantly refuses.

“I was _raised_ in Askr,” he corrects. “And I am familiar with the cold.”

Hríd has never been certain if its because he, as a royal, is more magically tied to the land, or if its just because he spent the overwhelming majority of his childhood running around outside falling and failing and learning the hard way. He leaves the question of why to the mages and the scholars. The what, though… Prince Bruno trudges off through the snow, and Hríd can tell by looking at it that in a moment, the man is going to hit a patch that’s been too compacted, is too slippery underneath, a little more dense, and little too tricky. He’s going to walk right into it with smooth metal Emblian riding boots, on top of all that.

Hríd shrugs and steps forward, and when everything happens exactly as he knew it would, he’s there to catch the emblian-raised-in-askr.

“I respect your experience,” Hríd says, solemnly. “But you must understand that Nifl is like no place you’ve ever been before.”

“And if I say I’ve been?” Bruno says, looking up.

Hríd has to force himself to talk, and not to stare in silence. They’ve asked him not to bring his mask. It’s important that it be _him_ attending the ceremony, and not someone pretending to be him , or perhaps the other way around. His eyes are beautiful. Filaments of gold weaving through maroon so deep and dark it reads as brown until one ends up close enough to see the slight differences that are present. A beautiful, concordant mess of gold and red and light and dark that somehow ended up looking like one single impossible shade.

And then, of course, there is faint tinged red blush of cold showing through the soft brown of his skin.

It is, of course, simply the cold.

Godsdamn, and he’s staring.

“I would say,” he says, calling on all the court training he was forced to do growing up in an attempt to steal back his focus, “that you couldn’t have stayed for very long, then, because you are going to get yourself into trouble like this.”

“You would not be here if you did not trust me,” he adds, on a whim.

Hríd can plot the safest course through the entirety of the Nifl Ice Field on a bad day, could make it through with only minor incident even in the dark. He can read a thousand different things from one sword stroke, and can tell with very little effort what needs to be done and when on a battlefield. These are the many languages he speaks.

When it comes to reading Prince Bruno, however, Hríd is completely lost.

He’s not sure, he thinks while Bruno regards him with no expression save what the scattering light from Nifl’s setting sun adds to the colors in his eyes, that even the Askrans could do it.

Of course Kiran seems to manage, and Hríd makes a mental note for the thousandth time to ask them for help.

“No,” Prince Bruno says, after a moment’s consideration. “I would not be.”

Hríd realizes, with a sudden shock, that the other man has yet to try and remove himself from Hríd’s steadying arm.

Godsdamn it, don’t stare, he commands himself, and while he does that, the rest of him is busy forgetting what he was supposed to be talking about.

“No,” he repeats, abandoning his earlier stern order not to stare, “You would not be.”

“Mm,” Bruno says.

Hríd finds himself drawn closer, and he wonders, with the part of him that wonders things he shouldn't, whether this is what the dark curse feels like. Being pulled towards another, along invisible lines that one’s eyes can’t see, relocated, pulled, focused. Bruno lets him get close enough that he can feel the heat of his breath. Close enough that the part of Hríd that wonders things he oughtn’t starts contemplating what it would feel like to move just that little bit closer, to reach out and touch his light, long hair, to finally kiss him and see what that does to the winter-defying warmth Hríd feels whenever Zacha-

Prince Bruno.

Whenever Prince Bruno is nearby.

Hríd pulls himself away, checks harshly the part of himself that forgets Prince Bruno isn’t a friend, but an ally, one with his own pain and injuries and struggles, one who Hríd can not and will not impose any further upon than he already has. Half dead, burned, furious. Crying. Hríd had taken so much of Bruno’s time when the other man found him slowly fading away from the after-effects of his fight with Surtr. Precious time, valuable time. Time Bruno was supposed to have spent trying to cure a curse so...so he could get back to the people he loved. And an Askran prince he could have had feelings for. Who could have had feelings for him. Hríd isn’t sure, when it comes to _love_ and _like_ Hríd is always on uncertain territory, but he does know it doesn’t matter.

Better is expected of him, as the oldest living Niflian heir.

He steps away and offers his cloak wordlessly. When Prince Bruno takes it with much the same lack of speech, Hríd considers his duty quite complete, for the moment. Up ahead, he notices Kiran rolling their eyes, but he’s unsure what the cultural connotations are for Kiran’s world, so he sets it aside.


End file.
